Meanings and Echoes of Childhood
Abstract:
In this essay I want to capture some of the jewels of what is possibly the most significant stage of our lives. Living in London more than ten years ago, I came across an elegant and glossy pamphlet in a friend’s apartment. It caught my eye and the resonance I felt with it increased when I found my curiosity justified, for it was a detailed program for an elaborate multimedia spectacle on the theme of the journey of the soul in this world. The emphasis of the spectacle was strongly on childhood, as a microcosm containing all the other developmental phases of our life trajectory. The language was poetic, not at all psychological jargon, doubling its appeal for me. Although I do not have the pamphlet now and can neither credit the company nor remember the name of the production, some of its essential sense was etched in indelibly in my mind.
As I recall, there was a poem in the program called “Gratitude and grief.” This was, perhaps, the most poignant and memorable element, describing the earliest phase of infancy, when the infant is cuddled closely by its mother. The two beings exist in a condition of supreme bliss and heightened, tender love. Experiments have shown that at a certain phase in its development, an infant does not have a sense of its separateness from its mother; rather, it is conscious of only one dancing and morphing entity, of which it is an inseparable part. In this state there is pure love and harmony. Nothing can surpass this heaven and nothing can intrude upon or desecrate its beauty.
But, as all good things must end, the infant is forced to venture beyond this paradisiacal niche and face the music of the world. And as fate would have it, the music of the world is dissonant and harsh, a far cry from the benign harmony the infant had known. The infant experiences despair, hurt and confusion. He finds his hands besmirched with the messy ink of life, with all its privations and ugliness, its lies and unresolvable complexities and contradictions. Although there may be strands and moments of beauty, the music of the world is untimely and cacophonous.